I: New and Selected Poems (Pitt Poetry Series) - Hardcover

Derricotte, Toi

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0822945665 ISBN 13: 9780822945666

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019

Synopsis

A Finalist for the 2019 National Book Award for Poetry

In Derricotte’s own words:

“How do you gain access to the
power of parts of yourself you
abhor, and make them sing
with beauty, tenderness, and compassion?
 
This is the record of fifty years
of victories in the reclamation
of a poet's voice.”

About this title

About the Author:

Toi Derricotte is the author of The Undertaker’s Daughter (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011) and four earlier collections of poetry, including Tender, winner of the 1998 Paterson Poetry Prize. Her literary memoir, The Black Notebooks (W.W. Norton), received the 1998 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Non-Fiction and was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her honors include, among many others, the 2012 Paterson Poetry Prize for Sustained Literary Achievement, the 2012 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry, the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, two Pushcart Prizes and the Distinguished Pioneering of the Arts Award from the United Black Artists. Derricotte is the co-founder of Cave Canem Foundation (with Cornelius Eady), Professor Emerita at the University of Pittsburgh and a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Toi serves on Marsh Hawk Press’s Artistic Advisory Board.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

The blessed angels
 
How much like
angels are these tall
gladiolas in a vase on my coffee
table, as if in a bunch
whispering.  How slender
and artless, how scandalously
alive, each with its own
humors and pulse.  Each weight-
bearing stem is the stem
of a thought through which
aspires the blood-metal of stars.  Each heart
is a gift for the king.  When
I was a child, my mother and aunts
would sit in the kitchen
gossiping.  One would tip
her head toward me, “Little Ears,”
she’d warn, and the whole room
went silent.  Now, before sunrise,
what secrets I am told!—being
quieter than blossoms & near invisible.
 

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 0822945665
• ISBN 13: 9780822945666
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320